


Madness/Monster

by raktajinos



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Anger, Challenge Response, Character Study, Denial, F/M, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence, POV Female Character, Shipping, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, not pleased with this but posting anyways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-05
Updated: 2013-03-05
Packaged: 2017-12-04 09:01:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/708961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raktajinos/pseuds/raktajinos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Explores Helen's feelings towards John from the time she discovers his secret to the (non canon) present. Her experiences with rage, anger and forgiveness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Madness/Monster

**Author's Note:**

> written for a challenge at [womenverse](http://womenverse.livejournal.com). My assigned song inspirations were 'Monster' by Paramour and 'I Just Wanna be Mad' by Terry Clark. 
> 
>  I'm really not pleased with this at all. It should be better. But there's a deadline and I'm going to submit. Maybe I'll edit it later.

_I'll never leave, I'll never stray_  
My love for you will never change  
But I ain't ready to make up or get around to that  
I think I'm right I think your wrong  
I'll probably give in before long  
Please don't make me smile  
I just want to be mad for awhile 

 

Helen tore down the dark hallway; her blonde hair completely disheveled and her dress covered in blood that was not her own. She was running blindly, her rage and despair leading her nowhere in particular; her mind crashing into walls as she sought refuge in her home. She stopped running, her breath ragged as she leaned against the wall and slid to the floor, tears burning her cheeks, boneshaking sobs shaking her body. 

She’d be lying if she said she was completely surprised; her and James had had suspicions for weeks now. But she wanted to be wrong; she needed to be wrong. She challenged James in every debate they had, challenging every piece of evidence he presented so logically. 

All of her lies and denial came crashing down around her tonight when she came across John butchering a woman in a back alley. The look on his face would never leave her memory. Cold eyes devoid of soul glared at her through the darkness, his mouth turned up into a goulish smirk distorting his face into that of a monster. 

“Helen”, he’d whispered into the darkness. It wasn’t the voice of a man ashamed to have his secret discovered, it was the voice of a man enjoying himself, there was glee in that deep timbre. And an invitation. Laced between the threat of violence and the mirth was an invitation for her to join him; the acknowledgment that she would find sanctuary in this new life of his if she so choose. It was dangerous, he was dangerous and when she’d replay this moment over and over again in her mind for the next hundred years, she’d never be sure if she, for a split second, considered it. 

As she sat on the floor, her knees curled up into a ball, she wondered how her beautiful, wonderful, kind John had become this monster. How long had he buried the blood lust, the desire for violence? He’d never been anything but gentle with her, though his passion for intellectual discussion and carnal pleasures burned bright. 

She didn’t know who he was anymore, what he was. The source blood did strange things to them all, but none so dramatic as what it made John become. She swore she would hunt him down, put a stop to the violence she had helped create and had let go on for far too long. She let him murder three more people when she could have acted on her hunch and end it. End him. Whatever that monster was, it was no longer her fiancé. And she had a responsibility; a job to do. There was part of her that was still in love with him, would probably be in love with him for as long as she lived. He was her first love and the passion she’d felt had rocked her to her very soul. But that man was gone and as she would need to accept that. 

The rage she felt in that moment, would fuel her for decades. But she knew she’d probably give in before long….forgive him at some point. She knew in her heart that she would. 

And she was right; it just took almost a century. 

Helen wasn’t sure when exactly she stopped hating him; when she stopped wishing him dead. The first decade had been completely righteous anger, anger towards him, what he’d done and towards herself for not noticing. She lashed out at him with poisonous words and equally as poisonous weapons. Yet she could never do it, not completely. She was never able to fully commit to trying to kill him. There were times too numerous to count where she’d come close but something in her made her not push the knife in deep enough or not use all the liquid in the syringe. 

And then there were the times she patched him up herself. She’d killed John more than a dozen times, but she’d brought him back to life more times than that from damage caused by her hand and by others. She could have, should have, just let him die on her operating table. But she never did. She hated him, she wished him dead, yet she kept saving him. 

She used to justify herself by saying it was because he was Ashley’s father and she had a right to get to know him one day if he ever got his crap together. She needed any excuse to cling to that assuaged her guilt for letting a monster like that walk the earth still. He’d killed hundreds of people, some at her command but most not, and she killed demons for lesser crimes. 

Hate. She hated him; loathed him. Hate was stronger than anger; anger could be calmed, could be turned towards action. Hate left nothing but a coldness as it burned its way through you. She spent more years that she’d like to admit living on her hatred for him; hatred for his betrayal of her for the way he irreparably broke her heart. 

She can still recall with frightening clarity, the look on John’s face that evening so many decades ago. It haunts her and as she looks upon that same face, she struggles to reconcile the two. The man he is now; a shadow of the man he was in their youth but now no longer haunted by the monster that possessed him. 

Helen often wondered if longevity would make humanity more forgiving or more peaceful. After living so long holding onto a grudge or anger for more than four decades became a chore; became exhausting. When you live forever, and you have one hundred years under your belt, the things that riled you up in the past just didn’t seem to matter anymore. Oh, she still had her principles and she held stedfast to them, but she lived in more of a grey area than she used to. Gone was her bright-eyed approach to the world and her noble stance. When you lived forever, sometimes you did thing that were not very noble. If she’d only had the eighty-some years most humans had, she might have lived her life more honestly and more morally. But here she was, a woman of almost 300 and she was still sleeping with the most notorious serial killer in history.


End file.
